Maier-Messner-Caldonazzi

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The Maier-Messner-Caldonazzi group (also Maier-Messner group ) was an Austrian resistance group against National Socialism .

The network of the Maier-Messner group

One of the ideologically leading figures in the resistance group was Heinrich Maier , the chaplain of the Gersthof parish in Vienna . A few minutes' walk from the parish church in Hasenauerstrasse lived his friend Franz Josef Messner , the second central figure in the group. He was the general director of Semperit AG and had in-depth knowledge of important war companies. The two met each other in 1936 at a funeral service in Gersthof . As early as 1940 Maier made contact with opposition groups, for example with trade union circles in Germany around Jakob Kaiser .

Both Messner and Maier were well networked in finance and business circles and also had contacts with military and prominent political circles. Maier was well known, for example, to the city commandant of Vienna, Heinrich Stümpfl , he knew the Christian socialist Felix Hurdes and, through Theodor Legradi , the director of the Wiener Wander-Werke , also the former social democratic mayor Karl Seitz and the communist Helene Sokal . Messner's circle of friends included Ernst Kraus, the director of Siemens-Schuckertwerke in Vienna , Josef Joham , one of the directors of Creditanstalt , the former Hungarian minister Gustav Gratz , the former minister of education Hans Pernter and the classical pianist Barbara Issakides .

In 1941 and 1942, a group of like-minded Austrian patriots formed around the two of them, who wanted to contribute to the rapid decline of the Nazi regime and fight for the re-establishment of a free Austria.

From 1943, the group also worked closely with the Catholic-monarchist network of opponents of the regime, which was headed by Walter Caldonazzi . Its members produced leaflets and scattered them, helped persecuted people and provided members of the Wehrmacht with fever-inducing agents that made them temporarily unsuitable for military service.

Coordination with the Allies

The group soon recognized that the active fight against the dictatorship of National Socialism could only be effective in coordination with the Allies , and so they tried to contact intelligence channels. The first connections between the resistance group and the Allies were established in the summer of 1942. Maier, Legradi and Sokal worked out a memorandum in which the current situation in Austria and the (potential) resistance were presented. Helene Sokal learned this document by heart and wrote it down on a trip to Switzerland . In Lucerne she gave the paper to an acquaintance of Maier, the theology professor Otto Karrer . He promised to forward it to the English minister Stafford Cripps and the Soviet foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov through the English consul he knew. As confirmation of receipt of the memorandum, a request was made to mention the password on May 1, 1942 on the radio. This password was actually sent by the BBC a few weeks later , with no response from Moscow.

At the end of 1942 first contacts with the Americans were made. Allen Dulles founded an office for the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) in Bern in November . Barbara Issakides, who had already met the lawyer Kurt Grimm in Switzerland in 1938 , made contact with Grimm again on a concert tour in Zurich, who was already working as an informant (code name as informant 847 ) for the OSS. Issakides made no secret of her aversion to the National Socialists. Josef Joham (informant 680 ) confirmed to Grimm the absolute reliability of Issakides. Another meeting took place in March 1943, at which the plans and goals of the resistance group were openly discussed.

Franz Josef Riediger was a representative of Semperit's interests in Turkey . In Istanbul he tried to establish a cooperation with the British secret service Special Operations Executive (SOE). However, Riediger seemed too careless and unreliable to the SOE and therefore broke off contact. At around the same time, in the summer of 1943, Riediger came into contact with the head of the OSS office in Istanbul, Colonel Lenning MacFarland, through the Czech businessman Alfred Schwarz (code name Dogwood ). Schwarz was a partner of the OSS agent Archibald Coleman (code name Cereus ) in the so-called Dogwood-Cereus-Circle . This spy ring, which operates from Istanbul, tried primarily to obtain information from Bulgaria , Romania , Greece, Hungary and the German Empire . Riediger (code name Stock ) and Messner ( Cassia ) were included in this ring .

In December 1943, Messner and Issakides went to Switzerland together. Messner met with Grimm, Issakides even with Dulles personally. Messner transmitted information about German production facilities for synthetic rubber and about German rocket production in Peenemünde (he himself had received the information from Ernst Kraus, among others). Dulles learned that the group was already in contact with the OSS office in Istanbul and that every step had been taken to maintain these contacts over a radio link in Algiers . At this meeting he indicated that he wanted to support the resistance group and asked Washington whether it would be possible to supply the group with a radio via a “parachute operation”.

It wasn't until early 1944, however, that the OSS realized that its branches in Bern and Istanbul had come into contact with the same resistance group. It was decided internally that further cooperation should be managed from Istanbul.

In January and February 1944, Messner provided the OSS with a great deal of information through Dogwood : About aircraft production, the Schoeller-Bleckmann steelworks in Mürzzuschlag, the Boehler steelworks in Kapfenberg , the relocation of the Raxwerke rocket shell production from Wiener Neustadt to Zipf , the quarters the Waffen-SS in Vienna, about the Waffenwerk Steyr, the Hermann Göring works in Linz , the light metal works in Berg and also information about mass executions and the introduction of the death penalty for additional offenses. MacFarland promised Messner financial support for the resistance activities and a radio to facilitate communication.

In February or March 1944, Messner also met Dulles in Bern, to whom he was able to convey new information about the war industry. The group hoped that by passing on information about operations that were important to the war effort, targeted bombing would bring about a quicker end of the war.

Structure of the resistance group

Opposite the OSS, the resistance group called itself the Austrian Committee of Liberation . The Americans codenamed Arcel using the acronym ACL . Riediger presented the structure of the group to the OSS as follows: Messner is the “head” of the movement, he heads a fourteen-member committee in which the entire spectrum of Nazi opponents in Austria is assembled: The Center Party , the Revolutionary Socialists , the representatives of the old Social Democratic Party and the communists . Each of these groups would have their own speakers and committees who only communicated through liaison officers. For security reasons, mutual disclosure of identities was limited to the bare minimum.

Breaking up the group

The first suspicions against Messner were voiced by Sigismund Romen, a high-ranking Semperit employee and radical National Socialist. In May 1943 he sent a letter to Joseph Goebbels , in which he described his boss as “subversive”. In further submissions to the Gestapo , he also accused Riediger. Although he did not provide any evidence, the allegations are likely to have triggered further investigations by the Gestapo.

On February 25, 1944, Caldonazzi was arrested by the Gestapo. Then there were several arrests in quick succession. While the arrest of Caldonazzi was possibly due to betrayal by someone from the extended environment of the resistance group in Vienna, the arrest of Messner was the result of investigations by the Nazi services. A double agent who infiltrated the Dogwood-Cereus circle and ultimately uncovered it made a significant contribution to the uncovering of the group : The Czech Bedřich Laufer (OSS code name Iris ) was also an employee of the defense (Abwehrstelle Prague, Section III F, code name František Laufer , Fritz Ludwig , Lauterbach and others) and the SD and was able to expose the clandestine courier connections between Germany and Turkey. Messner was arrested by the Gestapo on March 29, 1944 in Budapest while trying to collect money sent by the OSS to finance the resistance group (100,000 Reichsmarks).

On October 27 and 28, 1944, ten suspects were tried before the People's Court in Vienna. Judge Kurt Albrecht sentenced eight of them to death, one to ten years in prison and loss of honorary rights , and one was acquitted.

person arrest Another fate
Walter Caldonazzi February 25, 1944 Sentenced to death by the People's Court, executed on January 9, 1945 in the Vienna Regional Court .
Andreas Hofer February 28, 1944 Sentenced to death by the People's Court, shot dead in Stein prison on April 15, 1945 .
Josef Wyhnal March 18, 1944 Sentenced to death by the People's Court, executed on March 22, 1945 in the Vienna Regional Court.
Heinrich Maier March 28, 1944 Sentenced to death by the People's Court, he was transferred to Mauthausen concentration camp on November 22, 1944 , where attempts were made to obtain more information about the group. Transferred back to Vienna on March 18, 1945 and executed in the regional court on March 22, 1945.
Franz Josef Messner March 29, 1944 Sentenced to death by the People's Court. Was taken to Mauthausen concentration camp in November 1944, where he was murdered in the gas chamber on April 23, 1945 .
Barbara Issakides March 31, 1944 Wasn't charged, Maier tried to exonerate her. Was imprisoned for eight months and was admitted to the prison hospital with stomach illness.
Theodor Legradi April 3, 1944 Sentenced to 10 years in prison by the People's Court.
Helene Sokal April 4, 1944 After three months in prison, he was able to escape by a ruse and lived as a “submarine” in Vienna until the end of the war.
Hermann Klepell April 21, 1944 Sentenced to death by the People's Court, executed on March 22, 1945 in the Vienna Regional Court.
Wilhelm Ritsch Spring 1944 Sentenced to death by the People's Court. The liberation of Vienna preceded his execution.
Clemens Pausinger Spring 1944 Sentenced to death by the People's Court. The liberation of Vienna preceded his execution.
Karl Fulterer Spring 1944 Acquitted by the People's Court for lack of evidence.
Franz Josef Riediger - With the help of the OSS, he was able to get to Cairo under a changed identity .

Other people from the resistance group, not described in detail here, were arrested but not charged (Ludwig Ennemoser, Herbert Adelsberger, Josef Ricabona, Wilma Heindl, Hilde Palme etc.) or charged and imprisoned until the end of the war (Fred Herok, Evelyn Wagner) or were able to do so withdraw from the regime's grasp abroad (Wilhelm Hamburger).

In September 1944, the resistance fighter Fritz Molden , who worked for the OSS, came to Vienna from Switzerland to look for members of the Maier-Messner-Caldonazzi resistance group who had not been arrested. With the help of the student Harald Frederiksen, he was able to establish contact, and they managed to set up a news network with around 40 people. Through this network, important information was sent to the Allies in Switzerland on a weekly basis. At the end of January 1945 this group was also broken up by the Gestapo and many of its members were arrested.

literature

  • Christoph Turner: The CASSIA Spy Ring in World War II Austria: A History of the OSS's Maier-Messner Group . McFarland, Jefferson 2017, ISBN 978-1-4766-6969-4 .
  • Siegfried Beer : "Arcel / Cassia / Redbird": The Maier-Messner resistance group and the American military intelligence service OSS in Bern, Istanbul and Algiers in 1943/44 . In: DÖW (Hrsg.): Yearbook 1993: Focus on resistance . 1993, p. 75-100 .
  • Radomír Luža : The Resistance in Austria 1938–1945. Österreichischer Bundesverlag, Vienna 1983, ISBN 3-215-05477-9 , pp. 198, 273 .
  • Hansjakob Stehle : The spies from the rectory . In: The time . January 5, 1996 ( online at zeit.de; registration required).
  • People's Court : Judgments 5 H 96/44 - 5 H 100/44 and reasons for the judgment . Vienna October 28, 1944, p. 1–30 ( online on the DÖW website (PDF; 7.53 MB) - numbering errors: pages 11 and 12 are duplicated).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ C. Turner: The CASSIA Spy Ring in World War II Austria: A History of the OSS's Maier-Messner Group . McFarland, Jefferson 2017, ISBN 978-1-4766-6969-4 , pp. 19 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  2. ↑ Katharina Kniefacz, Herbert Posch: Heinrich Maier. University of Vienna , January 11, 2017, accessed on June 17, 2019 .
  3. ^ Peter Pirker : Subversion of German Rule: The British War Intelligence Service SOE and Austria . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2012, ISBN 978-3-89971-990-1 , p. 252–256 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  4. ↑ Stanislav Kokoška: The Division III F Abwehrstelle Prague in the fight against Allied intelligence services from 1941 to 1944 . In: Hans Schafranek , Johannes Tuchel (ed.): War in the ether: resistance and espionage in the Second World War . Picus, Vienna 2004, ISBN 3-85452-470-6 , p. 309-315 .
  5. ↑ a b c Andrea Hurton, Hans Schafranek : Im Netz der Verräter. In: derStandard.at . June 4, 2010, accessed June 17, 2019 .
  6. ↑ Issakides, Barbara, pianist. In: Ilse Korotin (ed.): BiografıA. Lexicon of Austrian Women. Volume 2: I-O. Böhlau, Vienna / Cologne / Weimar 2016, ISBN 978-3-205-79590-2 , p. 1437 f.
  7. ↑ Memorial stone for Hermann Klepell in Vienna-Währing. In: doew.at . 2019, accessed December 26, 2019.
  8. ↑ a b They died so that we could live. The group of Dr. Maier . In: The New Reminder Call . tape 5 , no. 2 , February 1952, p. 7 ( online at ANNO ).
  9. ↑ Radomír Luža : The Resistance in Austria 1938–1945. Österreichischer Bundesverlag, Vienna 1983, ISBN 3-215-05477-9 , pp. 198 .
  10. ↑ Fritz Molden : The fire in the night . Amalthea, Vienna / Munich 1988, ISBN 3-85002-262-5 , p. 123 .